Pole Vaulting Gold

One of the things that worked for the Olympic gold medal favourite was hypnotism, as well as some visualisation techniques, conducted by his sports psychologist.

"It's not like she had me walking around like acting like a chicken or anything," Hooker said. "It was more getting really relaxed, so your subconscious comes to the forefront, and just having her run through scripts about what things I needed to focus on.

"I would talk to her at the start of the session and say, 'I want to talk about lowering the pole vault in my last couple of steps and jumping off the ground.' I would tell her the cues I wanted to work on, so she'd work it into the things that she was saying while I was under hypnosis.

"I felt like that kind of stuff was cool. The more you do it the more you realise pole vault is mental. Just having any sort of mental stimulation, where you are thinking deeply about what you're doing, helps."

Hooker said his best jumps came after a break in training. "When I'm not jumping all I can think about is jumping," he said. "I do like a million jumps in my head every day, and when I get back my body knows how to do it better than I did before the break. All these things made me realise how important the mental side of the preparation is."

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